


It'll always be you

by yoolee



Category: SLBP - Fandom, Samurai Love Ballad: PARTY
Genre: Brotp, F/M, Fluff, Modern AU, Non-connected Drabbles, Reincarnation AU, Saizo is the best fairy godninja, unnamed MC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-23
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-05-27 03:35:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15015785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yoolee/pseuds/yoolee
Summary: Series of modern AU reincarnation drabbles, not necessarily linear. Saizo ships the heck out of his little lady and her little lord, and (with a great deal of exasperation and more affection than he'd care to admit) he makes sure that they can have the love story they've earned through the ages.





	1. Sabotage in Good Service - Saizo

**Author's Note:**

> Because han-pan and I were talking about how Saizo is THE BIGGEST YUKIMURA/MC SHIPPER IN THE WORLD (like he literally writes fanfic for them in the form of the lover’s guide in that one epilogue it is PRECIOUS) and he will protect that until he dies up to and including screwing over potential love interests for the MC until Yukimura can get in the picture.

He’d always known, in a sense. That there was more to him, to his story.

When he saw her face, the only difference was that in addition to knowing, he  _remembered_.

It was one thing to admit to the slippery, distant shadows of his own mind that it had knocked the wind from his lungs, that it had swamped him, cutting him off at the knees, head, heart, flooding the cold, quiet corners of his being with an ache and fondness so old and familiar he had been almost relieved to welcome it back. It was another entirely to tell anyone else, so naturally, he hadn’t.

Being sneaky about things had always come rather naturally.

So had being patient, though needing to actually exercise it in the face of  _wanting_ was entirely new.

(For this life, he acknowledged, not unwryly).

When slim, graceful hands had been found, wrapped around a cup of tea with an absurdly cheerful slogan plastered across, he had been expecting, anticipating, an immediate appearance of eyes as pure and brilliant blue as the sky, beaming with love for the other, and so dear in the pairing that he’d lived a hundred lifetimes waiting to witness it again.

(But as usual, Yukimura was an idiot, and therefore  _late_ ).

So Saizo watched  _her_ instead.

After all, he suspected that no matter what may have changed in the lifetimes between them, the probability of Sanada Yukimura being reborn with any degree of  _subtlety_ was simply nonexistent, and when he finally got around to blundering back into the little lady’s life, Saizo would notice.

The problem, in the meantime, was her inordinate knack for… _charming_ people, he decided, which of course could muddy things up for the reunion he so patiently sought.

(It doesn’t seem right, to see her smile change to recognition before Yukimura gets the chance, so he orders the stick of dango from her little brother instead, and sticks to the shadows—which he remembers with considerable less enthusiasm).

The first fly, circling fruit not meant for him, was easy.  A growled word or two, and the coward never called her again.

The second one was a bit more persistent, but eventually, with some  _doing_ , he’s offered a job in another country and that’s that.

It became something of a pastime, an amusement, contriving and observing the way they flocked, then were sent scattering with a casually placed word or piece of evidence. The smear of lipstick on a collar, a drop or two of the truth-poisons he knew now how to make again, a forged letter, an update they swore they didn’t make. Sudden credit reports, hitherto unknown involvement with mobs, or criminal histories.

(There is something cold to it, but he’s always been cold. He promises himself, at the sadness in her eyes as another one scrambles to explain the unexplainable picture, that it won’t go on forever. Just…long enough.)

When at last ( _at last!_ ) he comes, when he and his team swing the door open, cheering, boisterous jostling loud enough to muffle the ding of the bell over the door, she is gripping them hem of her apron, furious and blinking back tears, and lamenting to the deliveryman that  _it’s just my luck, that I can only find losers_.

He steps free of the shadows at last, because he can  _help_ with that, and as her eyes lock onto his, and widen with confusion, he takes her shoulders, and turns them before her lips can form the name they are remembering, and shoves her forward, not ungently, into the chest of a long-ago general, still leading troops with a smile. The recipient of his gift jumps in surprise, startled, but with a smile Saizo knows they won’t see—they’re  _staring_ at one another, like the lovestruck fools they’ve always been, and too distracted doing so to notice the gentleness—he finally relaxes, an old, brittle tension, a fear he might lose this,  _them_ , surrenders itself at last. There’s a feeble, uncharacteristic weakness to his bones, forged by relief, and he leans against the counter to hide it, fondness slipping into satisfaction as Yukimura hauls her into his arms for real, and she flings herself into them with equal fervor, and everyone else stares in a sort of befuddled bafflement as their supposedly bashful, stumbling, stuttering leader kisses a girl in a chef’s apron like he’s starved for the taste of her for centuries.

(But then, Saizo supposes,  _he has_ ).

He doesn’t want to interrupt, but it isn’t in his character not to. “You should know, little lady, that this one’s a bit of a loser, too.”

She pivots, beaming, even as Yukimura blinks at her absence, but the clouds of confusion part to leave only a blinding sun, reflected in her smile, and the pair of them are in sync as he finds himself toppled to the floor, in two pairs of joyful arms, too tight and too much, endless warmth, and endless light.

(That’s the  _thing_ , about the pair of them.)

(Together, their light’s bright enough to burn through even the darkest shadows).


	2. Best Man - Saizo

They keep their voices down for his sake, but he isn’t actually asleep.

He could be – it’s easy enough to nod off into a catnap, when he chooses – but there is something equally restful about simply listening to the lilting cadence of their hushed words, effused with unchanging, imperishable warmth.

_Which do you think, Yukimura? Pink or yellow for the bouquet?_

Pink, Saizo thinks, and he’d roll his eyes if they weren’t closed. She’ll choose pink in the end, of course. Yukimura won’t care either way, as long as she’s happy, and she usually is as long as they’re in the same room.

_I…whichever you like better? They’re both pretty I guess._

This, Saizo thinks, is where he  _ought_ to say ‘but not as beautiful as you’, and of course, he hears the stuttering start of just such a thing, before Yukimura turns into into a cough, his blush nearly audible.  _Y-you know…like…like, um…_ Saizo doesn’t cluck his tongue, since he’s supposed to be sleeping, but he considers it. Four hundred years of affection and the man still can’t tell his fiancée she’s as pretty as a flower.

Hopeless.

But, Saizo supposes, he wouldn’t be the idiot they all know and love if he could, though. The sun has shifted, so he does as well, adjusting against the windowsill with laconic grace, soaking in the early afternoon rays. They won’t see the movement. He can tell from the tones that their heads are down and together, no doubt buried in the magazines once more. He runs through a mental checklist; invitations, probably. That’s the next decision they have to make. Uninterested in the intricacies of typeface, he lets sunbeams and sweet voices lull him to sleep.

Or he  _would have_ , but the sun is suddenly blocked by two more immediate forms of warmth, bundled abruptly on either side as Yukimura claims one half of the window and his little lady wriggles into the remaining space on the other. A molten, irritated glare meets them equally, flickering to both of them above the flat, hard line of thinned lips.

Of course, they smile.

“Which of these do you like better, Saizo?” Yukimura thrusts the magazine into his lap, and Saizo flinches away.

“No.” he responds, simply, suddenly regretting his choice of perches. He should have known they’d drag him into it.

Yukimura ignores him, humming as he drums his fingers between two choices of tableware. Saizo frowns at him. Then he decides this newfound immunity to such things is someone else’s fault, and switches his scowl to the woman leaning over his shoulder.

Sensing his gaze, she glances up from the pages, and beams serenely. “Gray or blue?”

 _Pink_ , he thinks again, exasperated. They ought to know their own colors. “I don’t care?” The only question is why they would ask in the first place, really.   

“Pretend to, Saizo, come on.” Yukimura’s elbow, as usual, is overlarge and in the way, and Saizo flows around it with the boneless avoidance of a prickled cat avoiding a pet.

 _Red-orange_ , Saizo answers silently. Pink and orange, sunrise and sunset. The last comforting sight before the long night, cool and navy-dark. The vivid hope of a new day, chasing the shadows free from the sky in reverberant brilliance. “Gray.” He sighs, flat, and bored. He glances longingly to the table they occupied mere moments ago, willing them to return. Shoo now, go on.

“Blue it is then.” She says. “Yukimura?” Saizo heads whips to the side, he feels his eyes widen briefly in accusatory betrayal before sensing the expression form and snapping it back to blank.

Yukimura nods. “Blue. Thanks, Saizo.” He claps Saizo on the back–or would, but Saizo flows out of the way once more, only to be met with the little lady pressing a featherlight kiss to his cheek, her thanks a silent echo. Yukimura slides off the windowsill, her hand meeting his mid-reach, some choreographed instinct centuries-remembered. 

They’re a set when they turn, and Saizo squints at them before swinging his legs up once more, blocking any ill-advised return invasion of his space. Traitors. Why did he bother with them? “Go with the pink flowers.” He yawns, closing his eyes against the bloom of a smile on her lips, the brightness in his eyes, and thinks as he drifts off that if they ask him about invitations, he'll pick the most expensive ones out of spite.


	3. Kart - MC

Lost.

She had lost.

No—'lost’ was too benign. She had failed. Impressively. Completely. She'd been utterly and unquestionably _trounced_. In bewildered shock, she blinked at the screen, but the unforgiving display remained unchanged, and Sasuke whooped in triumph.

“Yee-ES!! CHAMPION!” His shriek was pure delight, making the toothsome grin as boyish as it was smug. “I told ya. I told ya I was the best.” He crowed, and flung out a hand, palm up and fingers wriggling.

“You hit the brakes!” The astonished protest passed her lips with dismay, eyes wide in wounded betrayal at the grinning champ. “You  _braked_ and let the blue shell hit  _me_ instead.”

It had been brutal.

It had been  _brilliant_.

Burying her face in her hands, she groaned.

The unrepentant Sasuke grinned with remorseless triumph. “Yup. Pay up.”

She sighed, but slapped the promised money into his outstretched hand, forfeited by her loss. After that came the shame-filled surrender of her controller to the next contender. The elder Sasuke accepted it with a smile more amused than sympathetic, and the smaller Sasuke’s glee swung straight back to ferocious, strategic intent. He folded his skinny legs underneath him and reset the challenge, only a side, sardonic glance spared for his newest challenger. “You are  _so_  going down.”

Sasuke laughed, low and full, folding his own legs in fetching imitation of the young reigning champ, and raised a skeptical eyebrow. His smile sparkled as fiercely as the boy's, tempered with experience but no less bright for the passage of time. “I think not.”

With a weary salute, she managed a listless, “Kick his ass for us, please.” The younger Sasuke snorted derisively at the suggestion, and she had to smile at how like Shingen the sound was. He was so like all of them in little ways. A sponge for habits and traits—some admirable, some less so, and some all his own. Shehad to resist the urge to ruffle his hair, knowing he would declare it a distraction from his purpose, already underway on some sparkling circuit.

Having been silently dismissed, she drifted towards the kitchen as the new race began in earnest. For a moment the shouts of the animated crowd sounded like something else,  _reminded_ her of something else, a battle on a field with both sides—

“Easy, little lady.”

“Saizo!” His name was automatic, and upon hearing it spoken aloud, his hands dropped from where they’d landed on her shoulders to stop her from running into him. He stepped around, nudging her into the kitchen with fluid nonchalance. The fuzzy scene of some long ago dream—surely it was only that—flickered with his touch. Her head didn’t shake, but she did frown, trying to reshape the errant thoughts into something she could grasp, but they were slipping. Fingers fluttered in front of her eyes, startling the last of gleaming armor and imagined gunshots into transient smoke.

She blinked at the fingers. Saizo removed them, nudging her again towards where Yukimura slumped over a mug of tea, expression woebegone and distant as he mumbled about mushrooms. There was an odd, curious relief at seeing him, strange for a silly game on the television. Saizo smiled, “Now, we were on our way to join the ranks of the despairing and defeated, weren’t we?”

It made her laugh, and she nodded, sliding into a seat next Yukimura and holding her hands out beseechingly. Saizo raised an eyebrow but obligingly placed a warm cup of hot tea in them. She drained it like a draught of life and tried her luck. “No snacks?”

Saizo didn’t quite sneer, but knowing him meant she was aware of the faint disapproval in him nonetheless, and so she knew better than to trust the apathetic drawl of words. “Not my jurisdiction.” There was a pointed glance in her direction.

She chuckled, sure he was capable of making snacks if he wanted, but not minding, not really. In fact, quite the opposite. It was a small way to give back to them what they gave her, the companionable happiness she hoped to replicate with food crafted by her hands.

The lingering unease from her unusual thoughts had been warmed away by the hot tea, and she rose again to rifle through Saizo’s fridge for ingredients. There was an apron left on a previous visit handy. Yukimura continued mumbling to himself about honor, defeat, and question mark boxes.

A shout came from the living room, “EAT BANANA PEEL, OLD MAN!”

“Not today, kid!” Came the response.

Yukimura’s fists banged the table. “I don’t understand!”

“Of course you don’t, dear.”

“I followed the _rules_!”

“First mistake.” Saizo’s murmurs went ignored by Yukimura, or perhaps unheard, but you caught them enough to bite back a smile.

“I had a plan!” Yukimura’s eyes were earnest and feverish, as the curled fists raised to support his drooping head. “But if all my strategies were for nothing,  I…I…”

“There, there…” Saizo’s eyes rolled up towards the ceiling as he patted Yukimura’s shoulder in a bland imitation comfort.

Yukimura groaned into his hands. “I’m a failure.”

“So am I, then.” Sliding a plate of quickly prepared snacks in front Yukimura, she offered a commiserating smile. “Or--I think maybe Sasuke’s just really  _good_.”

Yukimura sighed, something on his face that on a less noble visage might have been deemed a pout, but with his earnestness managed only to be unsullied, virtuous disappointment. “Well. I  _am_ proud of him.” He mumbled, still drooping, but smiled, “What a warrior spirit, huh?”

She wasn't entirely sure Samurai-o Kart really qualified, but tried for a supportive smile. “Still…” Yukimura's head yanked up, and he lunged forward to seize Saizo’s hands. Surprise flashed in red-brown eyes for only a brief second before fading into dismayed resignation. “You could beat him, Saizo! You could do it! You could avenge us both!” Saizo’s eyes narrowed.

From the other room came a triumphant shout. “I’M CHAMPION OF THE WOOOOOORLD!”

She winced. So much for that. Yukimura’s grip tightened on Saizo’s hands. “I ask you, as a friend. As a brother. Saizo, please. For us.”

Saizo didn’t look happy.

(But then that wasn’t terribly unusual.)

Yukimura pressed on, “For…dango?” His head whipped to his lover's, and she blinked.

“Er—well he has the ingredients.” She tapped her chin, calculating. “I could do dango easily enough.”

“For dango.” Yukimura confirmed and turned back to Saizo. Saizo  _frowned_ at him.

It had no effect.

“You want me to squash the budding confidence and hopeful dreams of my young protégé. Crush his spirit. Ruin his day and possibly his motivation to succeed in the future. For dango.”

Yukimura winced, dropping Saizo’s hands. “Well, when you put it like that…”

She interrupted, “Yes.”

With the fluid grace  of a boneless cat, Saizo stood and shrugged at the same time. “Alright.”


	4. Belong - Chibi Sasuke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Written before ninja Sasuke was released but, he travels too much. He's still around don't worry.

_Dad._  
  
Sasuke tries it out in his head first. He even lets the sound roll on his tongue, for a moment, just to see how it feels, but he presses his lips down before it can form into sound.  
  
He’d done it before. When he was younger, when he was little, sometimes it just…slipped out. He didn’t mean for it to, but it did. Wish, accident, habit. No matter why, Sensei’s expression never changed. He’d give the same bland, neutral gaze, and continue on his way. Hardly even a blink.  
  
Not that it mattered now, but Sasuke had always wondered about that. It was silly to  _expect_ a reaction - Saizo rarely reacted to anything - but, maybe a part of him wanted one. He couldn’t help but analyze. Sensei had taught him to do that; to analyze, to pick apart, explore possibilities so you could nudge them into the direction you wanted them to go. Did he not react because it wasn’t a big deal? Because it didn’t matter? Or because…Sasuke lets out a shaky breath he’s surprised to realize he’d been holding. Maybe because it was as natural for him, too, so he didn’t note it. 

Sasuke blinks, rubs his eyes, and takes another look.

It’s still there.

_His_  name, in tidy characters, neatly aligned, is listed right there on Kirigakure Saizo’s family register. Officially. Indisputably. The first child, a valid adoption. There’s a stamp that proves it. Official. Real. Maybe it’s always been there and he just didn’t know, but he knows now and it’s  _there_. 

His breath sucks in again, then out, and his throat hurts and his eyes sting.

“SASUUUUUKE!”

He has about thirty seconds to fold the paper, shove it back in the envelope and shove the envelope in his pocket before his arms are full of happy five year-old. Obligingly, he scoops her up, swinging her high into the air, and she giggles in delight. He tosses her, and catches the next instant, and she flings her arms around his neck with complete trust.  “Hi, Momo.” He murmurs, “Where are your parents?”  _Official,_ he thinks.

“Papa’s with Uncle Saizo, Mamma’s making Grandpa Shingen carry up the food.” Momo wiggles and Sasuke sets her down, only to have her hand folded into his, tugging eagerly towards the kitchen. “He’s gonna take us for ice cream.”

_Grandpa,_ Sasuke thinks with a snort. “Why isn’t he  _uncle_ Shingen?”

“‘Cause he’s old.”

“Ouch,” Sasuke winces in sympathy, but it’s pretty funny, even if loyalty demands he defend the man’s youth. “He’s not that old!”

Momo is undeterred. “I already  _have_ uncles.” She counts Saizo, he knows, even though he isn’t, officially.

“You can have more than two uncles.” He thinks he sounds reasonable, but she shakes her head, blue eyes bright and unconvinced. 

“Nu-uh.“ And with the whimsy of children, the subject changes lightning-fast, “I brought cheese for Momofuku!”

“ _Yeah_ -huh. And,” he hates  to correct her, so he tries to do it with a smile, tweaking her nose, “Momofuku only eats meat.”

“I know that.” Her words are chirping, brightened with pure smile. “The cheese is for the mice! They’ll come out to eat it and Momofuku can eat them!”

Sasuke freezes, and feels his skin prickle, slightly. “Are you…uh, sure you’re  _Yukimura_ ’s daughter?” He murmurs to no one in particular, and wonders if maybe the Sanada slyness skips - whatever Sanada genes gave her uncle Noboyuki his curious smile have clearly slipped into his niece’s world perspective too.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Yukimura, in the doorway, sounds genuinely bewildered, and Momo squeals.  
  
“Papaaaa!”

“She’s her mother’s daughter,” That’s Saizo,  _Dad_ , and Sasuke jumps, and finds he can’t quite look at him, so he looks to the woman in question at his side who is smiling in the slightly troubled, desperately fond way of indulgent mothers. “She  _feeds_ things.”

Momo’s mother laughs, the same bright, sweet sound, as her little girl, and Momo releases Sasuke’s hand to bound over to her. She takes the little girl’s hand, and Sasuke’s chest gave an odd twinge at the sight of them. 

His family, or most of it, crammed into a too-small kitchen that neither he nor Sensei make much use of, but keep stocked for when the others came over. The last member joins them, and Sasuke can’t help but quip “‘ _Sup_ , Grandpa Shingen.”

Red eyebrows fly into a hairline that is without, Sasuke can’t help but notice, so much as even a  _single_ strand of gray. “What’s that, then?”

“Momo’s idea. She says she can’t have more than two uncles and you’re old.” Sasuke does his best to keep his voice the neutral, level tone he learned, and grins when Yukimura splutters and Momo’s mother flushes pink. 

Saizo smiles.

Shingen laughs, low and liquid, and the sound of it flows to and fills the corners of the kitchen, and echos in Sasuke’s chest. “Only two, huh?” He lowers to Momo’s level, gaze mischievous, “Then what’s Masamune to you, hmm?”

Momo doesn’t hesitate, releasing her mom’s hand to lift her hands instead to Shingen, who obligingly picks her up and addresses her solemnly at eye-level. Serenely, she answers, “My future husband.”

Shingen blinks once, then roars with laughter. Yukimura chokes, Saizo sighs, and Momo’s mother claps a hand over her lips to stifle the shocked laughter that bubbles through them nonetheless. Sasuke, for his part, leans against the counter, feeling weird and floaty and  _happy_.

It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t  _really_ matter. It’s nice, but, whether it was official or not doesn’t matter. 

It just matters that they’re all  _here_. He feels the smile on his lips, stupid and fond, and sees his Sensei watching. Saizo rolls off of the wall he was leaning against and begins getting plates out to set the table. As he passes, his silent hand brushes through  Sasuke’s hair in absent affection and Sasuke’s eyes sting again.  _Dad. Sensei._ Saizo. Uncle, cousin, grandpa. It doesn’t matter if it’s official.

He already knows he belongs.


	5. Fault Lines - Ieyasu

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> SPOILERS okay SPOILERS. Not necessarily in and of itself but inspired them.

It hardly seems fair, that the gods dragged him back.

He did enough, didn’t he?

He did what no one else did. No one else  _could_. Surely, such a life had been spent thoroughly enough that an exercise in repeating it would be superfluous.

Hindsight is sprawled everywhere around him, in history books and dramas. All his failures, echoed through ages, analyzed, argued, impersonal. He sneers at the clear, stinging liquid in his cup, thinking it’s a wonder he can hear his own thoughts over the wail of drunken revelers, yowling over-enthusiastically along with whatever inept live band this dive has hauled in for a night’s entertainment.  How many of them are here to forget their troubles?

Lucky, foolish idiots. They’ve only a day’s worth to drink away.

He swirls his drink, but doesn’t sip it.

Are they even his, anymore? They belonged to another name, one he’d worn unwillingly, and then begrudgingly, and then because it became what he made of it, and all he had to do. 

He doesn’t  _want_ to remember. It feels too much like he has something yet to do, some mission he doesn’t want, still left undone. 

He did  _enough_.

A hand claps down hard on his shoulders, and he leaps to his feet, only for the hand to press him back down onto the stool, a bright, murmur of, “Easy, easy.” Ieyasu scowls at the blue-eyed owner of the hand, sliding into the stool next to him, but the man once known the spear of Sengoku only grins (easily,  _easy,_ how can he do it and make it seem easy, when it sends his own ghost screeching through his blood, bones shaking and uncertain, unsettled to see that  _face_ after so long, to see it moving, alive, and unmocking, easy, easy) “You came. I’m glad.”

It isn’t fair that he sounds like he means it. “I see a few centuries of distance from your shoulders hasn’t made your head any less full of fluff.” He hates how it doesn’t bite, how it sounds enviously bitter, brittle. He hates, too, that once again, the other man doesn’t let it land. He only smiles as a glass is placed in front of him, and the shifting light lands on a band around his finger, and both their eyes linger on it. 

Apparently, all he did was not enough to stand certain, when faced again with what’s before him. Some unhealed, unsteady crack threatens him still, a thousand seasons later.

For several moments, the drink in silence. Or as much of silence as can be considered such, with the band still screaming in the background.

It feels too much like  _waiting_. It feels too much like things are unsaid, undone. Ieyasu throws back the contents of his cup at last, knowing the burn will do him no good, that he’ll still know, still remember. He doesn’t say goodbye, just stands to go, and again that hand stops him. “Hey.”

“What.”

Yukimura—or whoever he is now, but that’s how Ieyasu knows him—smiles, squeezing Ieyasu’s arm once before releasing it and standing as well. “This time—” he trails off, struggling, and Ieyasu sighs.

“Spit it out, simpleton.”

“Kinda nice to get another go around, isn’t it?”

Ieyasu stiffens.  _He_ didn’t die.  (Well, he did. He had to, he supposes, or he wouldn’t be here. But it was later, far later). “Forgetting something?”

“No—but, I meant.” Yukimura hums, scratching his cheek in thought, and Ieyasu notes the wedding band once more, and is too tired to scowl at it, or acknowledge his relief at its presence. “We get to do it for us. This time. We get to live for us.”

“Your kitchen wench remembers then, I presume?” It sounds tired. So very tired. Yukimura’s face goes soft and stupid. So completely at peace. Ieyasu doesn’t know what it will do to him, to hear. He wants to hear it too badly to risk, so he cuts the other man off before he can answer, “Ugh.”

Yukimura laughs, but there isn’t much joy in it. It’s more the sort of laugh one gives when it’s laugh or cry. The joy in those too-bright blue eyes is tinged with a haunted grief, but they’re locked ahead. Forward. The grief fades, to something unbearably friendly. Welcoming. “Come over for dinn—”

“No.”

Hilariously, Yukimura’s entire face falls. “Wha—? Come on, it’ll be delicious.”

Ieyasu’s brows knit. “ _No._ ” Yukimura looks like he’s about to talk again, so Ieyasu sneers, “I’ll lose my appetite watching the two of you be as…disgustingly lovey-dovey as you get.” Something anxious flips in his stomach. He says it like its fact, but what if it isn’t? How many years? How many decades? He remembers pudgy cheeks, bright as a peach, turned smooth and strong as the ones that tended to her turned wrinkled and papery. A flash of light next to a life lived in full. Does she remember those years, as he remembers all of his? Does it make a difference, that one of them has less? Or was he there all along, and remembers too?

His hand snatches out, swiping Yukimura’s cup and he throws it back. Not that it helps, particularly.

Something wry and quiet touches the other man’s lips, and he fishes in his pockets. After several fumbling seconds, he produces a wrinkled piece of paper with an address on it, and with much  _less_ fumbling, a small, wrapped package that smells of strawberries and makes Ieyasu’s stomach flip and ache and his blood give a cold, anxious shudder. “Come over.” Yukimura repeats.

“You don’t have to sweet talk me anymore.” Tokugawa Ieyasu is dead, long ago and long done. There’s a rising panic he tries to quell, a horrible, terror-fueled shaking in his bones. His shoulders tremble, or they want to, but he holds them with gritted teeth and steel. “There’s no reason.” His voice doesn’t crack, doesn’t waver or shake, but the damned soul dragged back from death does, as a wave of yawning dread crests, “I’m no one.”  Not anymore, not now. 

Yukimura doesn’t even blink. “You’re our friend.” Unspoken, but heard in the dart of his gaze and the shrug of his shoulders, broad and unshaking, is  _or you could be, at least_.

The wave breaks.

And recedes.

A shuddering breath feels like exhiliration, weak and watery. In its wake leaves something too shocked to be fury. Annoyance, he thinks. Annoyance at their  _idiocy._  Ieyasu stares, incredulous. “You’ve  _got_  to be kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

“Then you’re  _both_ idiots.” Foolish, stupid, simpletons. Hundred of years, millions of sunsets seperated, lives lived and lost, and they want to have  _dinner_. 

Yukimura smiles. “Maybe.” He takes the empty cup from Ieyasu’s hands, puts it back on the bar and replaces it with the package he’s produced, from a silly, stupid, sentimental woman who loved her husband and loved her daughter, and smiled for them both for as long as she lived. Ieyasu doesn’t take it. He only stares. He feels giddy, light. Annoyed. It isn’t easy, isn’t at all, to deal with that horrible, hollow space that seems to flutter at the sight of it. Their foolishness, he decides, is apparently and unsurprisingly  _contagious_. A silly woman who lives again. And so does her husband. 

And so does he. 

Yukimura’s still talking, he notes dimly, “But we’d still like to have you for dinner.”


	6. Themes - Sasuke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ssh, sssssh nothing to see here, move along, move along, but thank you han-pan for getting me to open the app for the first time in weeks to consume my FAVORITE KIND OF STORY - aka, Kai Family Shenanigans.

Every year, Takeda Corp hosted a grand costume party.

There wasn’t any particular reason for this to happen - it was just the sort of thing one  _did_  when one was fabulously wealthy, overwhelmingly fond of their employees, and inclined to any sort of excuse to ingest copious amounts of alcohol and delectable food.

(Popular rumor was that one of Shingen’s lovers had instigated the tradition when she had wistfully recollected that TV had lied to her, what with nearly every show featuring the dazzling and wealthy having a mysterious masquerade at  _least_  once a season and thereby setting up certain  _expectations_ that had been grossly undermet by reality. Shingen, being Shingen, had swooped in to rectify this, but then insisted her face was far too lovely to be covered with a mask, and so it was costumes instead. Of course, still being Shingen, he had also insisted that other parts of her were far too lovely to be covered, and both Shingen and mistress were, notably, absent for the first few hours of the affair.)

(“Affair” being, one must acknowledge, the operative word.)

All of this was, mind you, conjecture and theory, and though Shingen’s mistresses had changed, the tradition had remained. What had  _also_ remained the same, naturally, was how particularly serious Sanada Genjirou Yukimura was regarding his costume selection.

It had to be grand, and put-together, and thematic, and appropriate - after all, he was representing Takeda Corp (and in particular, the Sanada stake in it), and if Shingen was going through such trouble to make such a festive event, it was only fair he put in equal effort to attending it. (Technically, mind you, it was Shingen’s long-suffering and ever-loyal secretary, Kansuke, putting in most of the work, but Kansuke enjoyed such things, insomuch as he enjoyed anything, and though he had worn the same exact costume every year the tradition had been running, no one had yet to notice or comment.)

The  _challenge_ , of course, was in getting Saizo to play along.

His wife did, and little Sasuke too. But Saizo-- _Saizo_ \--was another story. Yukimura had wheedled, and bargained, and begged, and sensing the (exasperatingly) tenacious nature of husband, wife, and small but stubborn student, Saizo had at last agreed to go along with whatever theme they selected, provided he could choose, compile, and wear a costume of his own choosing.

It was not, Yukimura quickly found out, the victory he had believed it to be.

That first year, his wife had been a beautiful blossom Yukimura a bright, round peach, and Sasuke a fuzzy and--though he would protest the description--adorable caterpillar.

Saizo, in a black shirt and pants, had proclaimed himself a branch.

Yukimura had been certain the next year that his recalcitrant bestie would join in, with Yukimura and his missus as Orihime and Hikoboshi (and Sasuke as one of his cows) but Saizo had slipped quietly alongside them, in a black shirt and pants, claiming to be the Milky Way - or  at least, how it appeared without a telescope, anyway. 

(The worst part of that year, Yukimura still sulked, was that Saizo had spent the  _entire night_  getting between him and Yukimura’s  _own beautiful bride_ , claiming only to be sticking with their theme).

But the  _next_ year! 

Alice in Wonderland! 

Surely there was no possible way for Saizo to avoid something fun and colorful and bright and odd, not with Yukimura and his cheeks painted with a card soldier’s hearts, his sweetheart with the Dormouse’s round, adorable ears atop her head, and Sasuke cackling as his overlarge hat slipped down over his eyes for the umpteenth time of the night.

And then, of course, Saizo has appeared, in a black shirt and pants, as the hole through which Alice had fallen.  

But  _this year,_  Yukimura vowed. This year would be different. He would get Saizo in a costume - a real one - if he had to duel the man himself. 

(Which technically, he had done a number of a times before, with varying results, but frankly getting Saizo to agree to it had about the same success rate as costuming did).

The three of them sat, huddled together with hushed voices. His darling wife spoke first, small wrinkle in her brow as she focused, distracting Yukimura temporarily with how much he loved it, that little wrinkle, which naturally extrapolated into how much he loved  _her_ , the woman who bore the wrinkle with grace and determination.

“Cinderella, maybe?” She offered. “Yukimura could be the prince, and oh, Sasuke you could be a mouse!”

Sasuke gave her a  _look_  of pure disdain, well beyond his tender years, and wrinkled his nose, “Ugh, no way! At least lemme be the prince’s bodyguard!” He leaned in, urgent and solemn, “I won’t let anyone flirt with Yukimura this year.” He straightened, doing his best tough-guy impression (an impression, all would agree, that looked quite a bit like his older and larger counterpart, or at least until he opened his mouth,) “Begone, thots!”

“ _Sasuke_!” The wrinkle disappeared as her expression yanked into shocked dismay, “Where on  _Earth_  did you--nevermind. Just. Don’t, don’t say that. It’s not nice.”

Their group was garnering quite a bit of attention in the quiet little cafe, and the outburst only served to draw more eyes. Sasuke noticed a pair of them linger a little too long on his favorite dunderhead and raised a skeptical but patient eyebrow until they diverted to himself. Once captured, he frowned and made a shooing motion with his hand where neither of the oblivious couple could see.  _Begone, thot!_

Yukimura, looking focused and faraway, shook his head, “It won’t work, anyway. He’d only use it as an excuse to leave at midnight.”

Mumbled sighs and assent followed.

Sasuke muttered under his breath, “No need for a costume in that theme, anyway. He basically already IS your fairy godmother.”   
  
Not catching the mumble, they blinked, “What was that?”

“Hmm?”

“Nothin’.” Sasuke dropped his elbows on the table and his chin in his hands, “What about  _pirates_?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If they go with pirates, Saizo will wear all black and claim to be a cannonball. Probably.


End file.
